Become the Big fish: How niche marketing does that for your online business.

Become the Big fish: How niche marketing does that for your online business.

If you were to choose between being a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond, what would go for? Niche marketing is choosing to be the big fish in a small or big pond.

Every business has a target market group. Within that targeted group, there will be smaller sub-groups of people who share common characteristics and have specific wants, needs, and preferences. These little sub-groups are a rich source of marketing opportunities and are called niches.

Because niche marketing is directed at a very specific population, it becomes possible only when a business specializes a particular service towards that demographic of consumers within its target group. If a business forms it marketing objectives around this sub-group, then the business would perfectly capitalize on the needs of the niche and increase its profits.

Niche marketing as a service differentiator

When employing a niche marketing strategy, you are simply playing to the strengths in your area of specialty to stand out from your competition. Choosing to specialize in one area, despite your enterprise providing other services and products and serving a much broader group, will make you stand out and set you apart in the market place.

Niche markets can vary in size concerning your market target group. Depending on the size of a given niche market, a marketing strategy might include;

Marketing to your niche only

Marketing to your overall audience from the perspective of your niche market.

Marketing both to your niche market and your overall market audience

Benefits of niche marketing

It must be said that niche markets are not for every business. However, if the nature of your enterprise affords niche market opportunities, then there are many benefits to be exploited.

Reduced competition

With niche marketing, you can have access to an entirely untapped market or one with few players. If there are other players in the market, you should ensure that you uniquely tailor your product to be synonymous with your enterprise even though your competitors may offer a similar service. This means that you are working on the premise that the more specific your product or service is, the harder it will be for other companies to compete or duplicate your strategy.

Increased awareness

Increased online presence and customers are direct benefits of niche marketing. By attending to a unique customer base your product or service becomes unique. For instance, a cleaning service using eco-friendly cleaning agents will tend to stand out because they serve an environmentally conscious clientele. Similarly, a gluten free bakery will manage to stand out from all the other run of the mill bakeries.

Such unique aspects of an enterprise tend to stand out and with that also attract media attention which is a plus. Your customer base in that niche is likely to grow quickly due to referrals from the customers you have served. This is because people with a unique need are certain to know other people with similar needs.

Fewer resources

To make informed marketing or product line decisions you need to understand your online market. This usually means investing time and money in data and analytics to generate valuable insight.

However, niche markets tend to be simpler to read and conclude as you are dealing with a group of people with a common need. As such, there is less need in scrapping through heaps of data to understand and keep up with customer needs.

Niche markets also tend to be more cost effective in online advertising. The effort and cost is naturally low as you are dealing with one demographic no matter how broad. On the other hand, businesses with a wide market target group will have various segments within the same group. Their ads and marketing content have to look different for all segments which require more effort and bandwidth.

Both standalone niche markets and niche markets within a wider group have great marketing opportunities, and you don’t have to spread your resources too thin to cover your market segment.